“Raada,” he said. “I heard about that, and what you did there.”
“We tried to fight, and everything just got worse,” Ahsoka said. “It’s not like the Clone Wars. I was never alone then. I had an army, I had masters, I had—”
She’d had Anakin Skywalker.
“You can’t fight the Empire alone, Ahsoka,” Bail said gently. “But you don’t have to, either. You can fight it with me.”
“I can’t command people anymore,” she said with a shake of her head. “I can’t order them to their deaths. I’ve done that too many times.”
“We’ll find something else for you to do, then,” he said. “I have a lot of job openings, as you can probably imagine.”
He could see that she was very tempted. It would be safer than continuing to right wrongs on her own. Whatever was chasing her would have a harder time tracking her down.
“There are children,” she said after a long moment. His blood ran cold. “All over the galaxy. I’ve met one, but I know there will be others. They would have been Jedi. Now they’re just in danger. Something is hunting them down. I don’t know what it is. I’ve never seen it. But if you will help find it, I will join your rebellion.”
The casual way she had talked about Anakin and Padmé made him think that she might have known the true nature of their relationship but not the outcome. He was sure she didn’t know about Leia, about the boy. She couldn’t know his motivations, but he would overturn every stone in the galaxy to help her, if it was in his power to do so. Having someone else lead the search would work out well for him, too. Every layer of deception between him and anything connected to the Force was another layer in the safety net he was building for his daughter.
“That seems like a bargain to me,” he said, when his voice came back. “And I have a mission for you, as it turns out. Are you up for it?”
Ahsoka was exhausted, though she did her best to keep it from showing in her face. The fight with the Black Sun agent, her escape from Bail’s hired hands, and then her trip through zero gravity had drained her. It was taking everything she had to stay upright behind the desk while she and the senator traded barbs, then words, and finally got down to negotiations. When he said he had a mission for her, she almost wilted, but she had been awake this long. She could manage a little longer.
“I might need a meal before I head back out,” she said, “but I’d like to hear about anything you think I’d be interested in.”
“It’s on Raada,” Bail said. Ahsoka felt immediately sharper. “My contacts in that sector have been getting spotty information for a long time—that’s part of why it took me so long to find you—but then this, as clear as starshine.”
Ahsoka held out her hands and Bail handed her a datapad. She flipped through it as Bail continued to talk. It was mostly maps, and diagrams of the Imperial compound, things she already knew.
“It seems there’s a new sort of Imperial agent there,” Bail continued. “Nonmilitary, but powerful. He has complete control over the garrison, if he wants it, and orders the officers around like they were stormtroopers. All of this is made more complicated by reports that he carries a double-bladed red lightsaber.”
Ahsoka nearly dropped the datapad. It was getting too easy to surprise her. She needed to refocus, but she couldn’t seem to find something to focus on.
“What does he look like?” she demanded.
“The overwhelmingly common descriptor is gray,” Bail said. “Not terribly helpful, I think? Even the security footage doesn’t reveal very much.”
Ahsoka’s mind turned it over quickly. Gray was not the sort of word anyone would use to describe any of the adversaries she was used to facing. This had to be someone else. Someone new. Someone like—
“A shadow?” she asked. “Gray like a shadow?”
“I suppose,” Bail said. “He’s rumored to be very fast, and he must be a Force wielder to carry a lightsaber, don’t you think?”
“Not necessarily,” Ahsoka said. “But it’s probably true in this case. The Empire wouldn’t send just anyone to hunt down Jedi.”
“How do you know he’s hunting Jedi?” Bail said.
“Don’t you think it’s a little strange that your intel was so spotty on Raada until now?” Ahsoka said. “Until I started drawing attention with my ‘acts of kindness’ as you call them? Until whatever this creature is was drawn away from the whispers he was hunting to follow bigger prey?”
“I didn’t know about the last part,” Bail said. “But yes, I did think it was strange. Also, there’s something else you need to see. I thought it was just a trap set for anyone, but now that I’ve heard your side of the story, I think it might be a trap set specifically for you.”
Bail picked up the datapad that Ahsoka had dropped and thumbed through to the final entry. It was a picture, taken by a security camera and beamed out across the stars, to be decrypted by Bail’s agents. But it was astonishingly clear for an accidental transmission. Knowing that it was a trap made the clarity make much more sense.
Ahsoka took back the datapad and looked down at the picture. Her heartbeat sped up, and she felt like all the oxygen had been sucked out through the very airlock she’d used to get into Bail’s office. There was the gray creature, his face obscured by a helmet but his lightsaber plainly visible. And there was Kaeden Larte, obviously his captive, with her broken arm bound tightly to her chest and her frizzy hair flying in all directions.
“Oh, no,” Ahsoka breathed. “I have to—”
“Stop,” Bail said sternly. She froze automatically and then glared at him. His expression softened and he came around the desk to stand close to her. “Ahsoka, you need to rest. You need to plan. They’re not going to hurt her any more. They need you to show up first. The best thing you can do is make sure you’re as prepared as possible when you do.”
She slumped back in his chair, hands falling into her lap in defeat. He reached out to put his hand on her shoulder, and they both jumped when there was a clamor outside the main door of his suite. It hissed open and Captain Antilles burst into the room with several security officers.
“Senator!” Antilles said, and then stopped. He took in the room at a glance and dismissed the security force.
“Everything is under control, Captain,” Bail said. “This is a friend of mine. She’s going to be with us for a while. We’ll need to pick up her ship before we leave, and she’ll need quarters.”
Antilles nodded sharply, and then left as quickly as he’d arrived.
“You didn’t tell him who I was,” Ahsoka said. “Are you really that vulnerable?”
“Yes,” Bail said. “But we’re getting more secure every day. Still, I don’t like to give away other people’s secrets. If you want to tell him who you are, that’s up to you.”
“Thank you,” she said. Then: “You mentioned quarters?”
Bail showed her into the suite next to his and then went down to the cargo hold to make sure her ship was being secured. Ahsoka cleaned up, stripping off the pressure suit. She’d had to leave her bag in the ship, but the little package of tech parts fit next to her skin inside the suit. She opened it now and made sure everything was still intact.
“As if you could break any more than you already have,” she said. Then she turned her attention back to getting dressed.
She debated for a moment between food and sleep, but the latter required less effort, so she lay down on the bed. She was asleep almost instantly.
Ahsoka dreamed of ice, and an urgency she hadn’t felt in years. She had to make it back to the mouth of the cave while the sun held the ice back or she’d be trapped on that frozen planet for much longer than she wanted to be stuck anywhere so cold. But where was her crystal? Master Yoda had been no more helpful than he usually was, telling her only that she would know it when she saw it. But where was it? And how would she know?